As your browser does not support javascript you won't be able to use all the features of the website. We strongly recommend you to enable the javascript in your old browser's settings or download a new one.

Amazon Surprises with Big Q3 Beat, Also GOOGL, MSFT, INTC

Amazon.com AMZN, not typically known for blowing away quarterly earnings estimates, posted a big earnings beat in its Q3 earnings report after the bell today. From expectations of just $0.01 per share, Amazon put up 52 cents per share, exactly meeting its year-ago earnings total. Revenues of $43.74 billion outperformed the $42.18 billion in the Zacks consensus.

This is only the third bottom-line beat for Amazon in the past five quarters. Generally, huge investments into new markets soak up all of Amazon's quarterly profits, while investors focus mostly on the enormous and widening revenue streams. The Whole Foods turnaround looks to be accretive to Amazon's gains at an earlier point than most of Amazon's new businesses.

Guidance for Q4 display very wide ranges for both net sales ($56.0-60.5 billion, 28-38%) and operating income ($300 million - $1.6 billion). Even still these numbers look a tad conservative, with the pre-report Zacks consensus revenue estimate at $58.93 billion. If Amazon posts another quarter like the one just reported, it could plausibly eviscerate those estimates.

Amazon shares are now trading up over 8% in the after-market today. Shares had already gone up 30% year to date, but had been down more than 7% since the company's rather disappointing Q2 earnings report. Amazon has now already made up for that shortfall, and then some. Prior to its earnings surprise, Amazon was a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) stock, with a Zacks Style Score of B.